jimjom wrote:Can the Pens really still use the injury excuse? Crosby is the best player in the world, he's irreplaceable. Letang is also unreal. Staal has been a beast. But Malkin, Kunitz, Kennedy, Sullivan, and Dupuis have all had 20 goal seasons. Orpik, Michalek, and Martin are veteran top 4 defensemen.

My point is basically that there are lots of teams that have far less talent than the Pens do even with these injuries that are above the Pens in the standings.

At a certain time you have to look for other reasons why the team is losing and you can't dwell on or hang your fate on injuries. You have to solve what "this" is and overcome it. Whether that's changing systems, bringing in new players via trade to compliment your snipers or a coaching change (this isn't going to happen I'm citing it as an example) you have to somehow correct this ailment on your own as a team.

I do not agree with this. Who above us has less talent than we do at this point? Flyers, NJ, Rangers, Ottawa, Boston, Caps, Toronto all have more skill than us at the top of their lineup. We have Malkin, Neal and a bunch of 3rd and 4th liners. Neal has a bad wheel, but to his credit he is right back at it. Kunitz is our best forward after them. We do not have a 2nd scoring line at all to take the pressure off of them.

I am not saying they cannot win with this lineup - ever, but they have so very little margin for error right now. There is almost zero skill in this lineup. The guys you say have scored in the NHL score by system - and that system is just not working right now. They are all struggling to score now at once.

Would you tell me you think Malkin and Neal are better than Alfreddson, Mihalek, Greening, Spezza and Foligno in terms of ability to change the game in a short stretch of games? If I were starting a team I would take Geno and Neal, but that would be under the assumption that I wouldn't just have them and a bunch of ham and eggers. Rangers - Richards, Gaborilk, Callahan, Dubuinsky. Stepan, Anisimov......Devils - Parise, Elias, Kovalchuk, Henrique.....

I think what we are lacking is skill at the top, and unfortunately we are built to generate offense off of Crosby, Staal and Letang at the back.

See, the thing for me is this. This team is in the same injury situation as last year. Forget the 8 games Sid played and he's basically been out an entire year. This was about the time Malkin went down so last year at this time Staal was the #1 center, now Malkin is. The only thing different is now Letang is hurt. So I don't get what people mean by the injuries are killing the pens because it's almost just like last year. This team is not playing well and that's all there is to it.

meecrofilm wrote:Also, Dupuis and Kennedy combined got more even strength ice time in the 3rd than Geno and Neal did. I don't know what that means, but it's certainly not a positive for Bylsma's handing of the game.

when i saw craig adams on the ice late in the 3rd, that's where i stopped keeping track of such things.

as for tangradi, i don't really get what they're doing. he's clearly not a liability the way that williams and macintyre were. and they need to collect data on him more than mcdonald. but here he is...a zillion games into our personnel crisis finally seeing ice time. i don't have high hopes for the guy, but i don't get their approach.

Byslma is completely in love with Adams. I'm waiting for him to be moved to the top line soon.

jimjom wrote:Can the Pens really still use the injury excuse? Crosby is the best player in the world, he's irreplaceable. Letang is also unreal. Staal has been a beast. But Malkin, Kunitz, Kennedy, Sullivan, and Dupuis have all had 20 goal seasons. Orpik, Michalek, and Martin are veteran top 4 defensemen.

My point is basically that there are lots of teams that have far less talent than the Pens do even with these injuries that are above the Pens in the standings.

At a certain time you have to look for other reasons why the team is losing and you can't dwell on or hang your fate on injuries. You have to solve what "this" is and overcome it. Whether that's changing systems, bringing in new players via trade to compliment your snipers or a coaching change (this isn't going to happen I'm citing it as an example) you have to somehow correct this ailment on your own as a team.

I do not agree with this. Who above us has less talent than we do at this point? Flyers, NJ, Rangers, Ottawa, Boston, Caps, Toronto all have more skill than us at the top of their lineup. We have Malkin, Neal and a bunch of 3rd and 4th liners. Neal has a bad wheel, but to his credit he is right back at it. Kunitz is our best forward after them. We do not have a 2nd scoring line at all to take the pressure off of them.

I am not saying they cannot win with this lineup - ever, but they have so very little margin for error right now. There is almost zero skill in this lineup. The guys you say have scored in the NHL score by system - and that system is just not working right now. They are all struggling to score now at once.

Would you tell me you think Malkin and Neal are better than Alfreddson, Mihalek, Greening, Spezza and Foligno in terms of ability to change the game in a short stretch of games? If I were starting a team I would take Geno and Neal, but that would be under the assumption that I wouldn't just have them and a bunch of ham and eggers. Rangers - Richards, Gaborilk, Callahan, Dubuinsky. Stepan, Anisimov......Devils - Parise, Elias, Kovalchuk, Henrique.....

I think what we are lacking is skill at the top, and unfortunately we are built to generate offense off of Crosby, Staal and Letang at the back.

2 points. First, I don't think that the remaining players can use team injuries as an excuse because many of them disappoint individually right now. That's on them. We can debate how successful we can be at this time, but we are definitely not playing our game. Second, we are obviously outskilled in the top 6. Even with Crosby healthy, we only have 3 players who can regularly score (c, malkin, neal). Kunitz is very streaky and so is Staal, so they can both go 5 games without a point. Our strenght is on display when Crosby and Malkin dominate and the rest of the guys suffocate the other team with tenacious play. Because of the way we are built, any injury to Crosby or Malkin throws the entire system out of whack.

And another thing. When we were playing well a couple of years ago, I remember being one the top three best defensive teams in the league. This is what bothers me, especially, this year. Forget scoring. We can't keep the puck out of our net and it is mostly the result of bad play from our defenseman. Letang's been out too long so I can't blame him. I've been very happy with Engelland. Niskanen is trying and has made big strides, but still makes costly mistakes now and then. I'm sorry for ripping on these two guys again, but we are paying a lot of money for Martin and Michalek and they are not pulling their weight. 34 games, -9; 21, -9. Each night, one or both make a bumbling play that costs us a goal.

Somebody suggested we need to trap. I don't know if I would go that far, but Bylsma should concentrate on developing a better system to prevent pucks from going in. We're not going to score a lot, so we have to try winning that way. I don't know how good we can be with a clear lack of size on defense, but maybe that is something Shero can address in a trade. I continue to stress that the second pairing of M and M is a big problem.

Certain individial players can be criticized, yes, but right now the entire team is producing zero offense. Zero scoring chances.

While it would be hard to imagine making changes to a coaching staff the year after the Jack Adams was awarded, the fact is that with the team now out of playoff contention at the moment, all bets are off. Regardless of injuries, a philosophical change is needed. The players clearly do not want to play this system or scheme any longer. Back in 2009, we all said that RS would never get rid of a coach who just took the team to the finals, but the players eventually forced his hand. This 6 game losing streak looks like that situation all over again.

I really believe that this team overachieved last year in the thought that Crosby and Malkin might come back. They worked so hard for 11 months and when they finally got their Captain back it was a total relief. But when he was out little more than two weeks later and they were facing that grim situation all over again it was simply a back breaker, mentally. In my opinion, 90% of this teams problems are mental. The process of having your captain being taken away again was just too much to bare again along with the injuries to Staal and Letang. You can only go all out for so long to have such a minimal reward such as getting bounced in the 1st round.

With the news about Crosby finally coming out, i expect the moral of this team to really suddenly jump in the right direction. I can't remember who it was but i think Josh Yohe was quoted on twitter that the locker room was noticeably more upbeat tonight after the loss to the caps. They know dawn is coming.

Bioshock wrote:I really believe that this team overachieved last year in the thought that Crosby and Malkin might come back. They worked so hard for 11 months and when they finally got their Captain back it was a total relief. But when he was out little more than two weeks later and they were facing that grim situation all over again it was simply a back breaker, mentally. In my opinion, 90% of this teams problems are mental. The process of having your captain being taken away again was just too much to bare again along with the injuries to Staal and Letang. You can only go all out for so long to have such a minimal reward such as getting bounced in the 1st round.

With the news about Crosby finally coming out, i expect the moral of this team to really suddenly jump in the right direction. I can't remember who it was but i think Josh Yohe was quoted on twitter that the locker room was noticeably more upbeat tonight after the loss to the caps. They know dawn is coming.

"I don't think he's anywhere close to coming back," defenseman Brooks Orpik said. "We can't really wait for him."The guys who are going to pull us out of this aren't Sid or [injured defenseman Kris] Letang. It's the guys who are in this room."Obviously, we'd love to have those guys in the lineup, but that can't be our attitude right now. We can't wait for those guys."

There is a major difference between last year and this year. At first glances, the pens were in worse shape last year...Staal misses first half...Sid misses second half...Malkin right after him, but it's really not the case. In 2010-11, Michalek missed a month out of the gate, Orpik was on the shelf a bit in the spring, and Martin missed a few games as well...but that was basically it. In relative terms, our defensive core was 'healthy' last year...they played the majority of games as cohesive unit, and we saw the benefits.

2011-12 has been very different. Michalek, Martin, Lovejoy, Letang have ALL missed signficant time...a month or more at least, and at different times. That is crippling to a team that is built to keep the puck out of their end. Niskanen has stepped up, Orpik...well, whatever, Engelland hasn't been awful...Depres, Bortuzzo, Picard...all stepped in admirably, but it's just not a cohesive unit right now. And all this under the fact that Letang, who's the hinge that our D-core is built around, hasn't played since November.